The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

by Julie Zhuo

A softer approach is to ask your report, “So what do you think the next steps should be?” and let them guide the discussion.

Own the decision. Be firm, and don’t open it up for discussion.

it’s insincere to act as if she had had a say.

When you give feedback or make a decision, your report may not agree with it. That’s okay. Keep in mind that some decisions are yours to make. You are the person ultimately held accountable

the truth is that most of us aren’t very good actors. People know. They see the faults that you don’t want to admit, like how my anxiety was leading to wishy-washy decisions.

Here’s the thing to remember: feeling this way is totally normal.

I’ve received emotional inquiries from people about countless decisions that I didn’t make myself but that I still had to explain.

GET TO BRUTAL HONESTY WITH YOURSELF

skew toward long-term thinking, which means that I sometimes make impractical short-term decisions.

The first part in understanding how you lead is to know your strengths—the things you’re talented at and love to do.

great management typically comes from playing to your strengths rather than from fixing your weaknesses.

The biggest barriers that get in my way are self-doubt, a tendency to complexify, and not being clear and direct enough.

cognitive bias where people who aren’t actually very skilled have a tendency to think they’re better than they are: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Even worse, people will start to discount what I say because they’ll conclude that I have a warped sense of reality.

What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact?

What skills do you think a hypothetical perfect person in my role would have? For each skill, how would you rate me against that ideal on a scale of one to five?

It takes a certain amount of confidence to ask for critical feedback.

it’s within my power to improve has allowed me to approach learning with curiosity instead of apprehension.

would never have known that my feedback was often vague and hand-wavy had I not invited that comment from a colleague.

more precise and actionable, and now that’s praised as on...

The perspective you have changes everything. With a fixed mindset, your actions are governed by fear—fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of being found out as an imposter. With a growth mindset, you’re motivated to seek out the truth and ask for feedback because you know it’s the fastest path to get you where you want to go.

I schedule half an hour of “daily prep” into my calendar so I can study my day and visualize how I want each meeting or work task to go.

schedule “thinking time” blocks on my calendar so I can sort through and write down my thoughts on big problems. Twice a year, I look back on the past six months and reflect on what I’ve gotten better at. Then, I set new learning goals for the next six months.

Try this

Which six-month period of my life did I feel the most energetic and productive? What gave me that energy? In the past month, what moments stand out as highlights? What conditions enabled those moments to happen, and are they re-creatable? In the past week, when was I in a state of deep focus? How did I get there?

One of my triggers, for instance, is injustice. If something doesn’t seem fair, my blood pressure rises and my heart starts to pound. I’ll make a mountain out of a molehill by stubbornly arguing the point with others, even if I don’t have all the information.

Samee

double whammy of struggling with something and worrying about the fact that you’re struggling with it. Why is this even hard for me? your internal critic might wail. If I were smarter or braver or more talented, I’d be fine. By feeling guilty about the way you feel, you’re creating even more stress for yourself.

Part of the reason bias exists is that our brains are wired to take shortcuts so we can arrive at faster conclusions.

confronting reality is always better than spinning disaster in your head.

Not only can visualization improve your outcomes, it can also help you find confidence when you’re in the Pit.

The key to successful visualization is to make the scene as specific as possible.

Admitting your struggles and asking for help is the opposite of weakness—in fact, it shows courage and self-awareness.

When others understand our plight, we benefit tremendously.

Little Wins. Every day, I’d jot down something I did that I was proud of, even if it was small. Sometimes, I’d celebrate a 1:1 where I gave someone helpful advice. Other days, I gave myself credit for running a productive meeting.

Try this

You can’t do your best work unless you physically feel your best, so take care of yourself. It’s always worth it.

How can I be twice as good? Then maximize your learning through the following.

if there is a secret sauce to self-improvement, it’s to ask for feedback from other people all the time.

ask for both task-specific and behavioral feedback. The more concrete you are about what you want to know, the better.

Always thank people for feedback. Even if you don’t agree with what’s said, receive it graciously and recognize that it took effort to give. If others find you defensive, you’ll get less feedback in the future, which will only hurt your growth.

your own boss should be one of your best sources of learning.

Regardless, the person most invested in your career isn’t him; it’s you. Your own growth is in your hands, so if you feel you aren’t learning from your manager, ask yourself what you can do to get the relationship that you want.

your manager is someone who is on your side, who wants you to succeed, and who is usually willing to invest her time and energy into helping you. The key is to treat your manager as a coach, not as a judge.

Ask, “What skills do you think I should work on in order to have more impact?” Share your personal goals and enlist his help: “I want to learn to become a better presenter, so I’d be grateful if you kept an eye out for opportunities where I can get in front of others.” Tell him your hard problems so he can help you work through them: “I’m making a hiring call between two candidates with different strengths. Can I walk you through my thinking and get your advice?”

When I started to see 1:1s with my manager as an opportunity for focused learning, I got so much more out of it.

That’s what a mentor is—someone who shares her expertise to help you improve.

Nobody wants to be asked, “Will you be my mentor?” because it sounds needy and time-consuming. But ask for specific advice instead, and you’ll find tons of people willing to help.

Over the years, I’ve asked her dozens of questions on how she does it—how does she run her meetings? What tools does she use to communicate with her broader team? How does she manage to extend that sense of connection across remote offices? Her answers have directly shaped how I run my team. For example, I hold weekly office-hour blocks as a result of a direct tip from her.

we learn more when we couple our experiences with periodic reflections.12 Even though people prefer to learn by doing, “participants who chose to reflect outperformed those who chose additional experience.”

Get rid of status updates in my 1:1s: Use that time to have deeper conversations with my reports.

investing in your own future but also the future of your team. The better you are, the more you’re able to support others.

New managers sometimes ask me, “A decade into the job, what’s something you’re still continuing to learn?” My answer is, “How to be the best leader I can while staying true to who I am.”